In conjunction with the Firehouse concert I watched yesterday, I’m gonna write about love, Love of a Lifetime.
How do you define a love of a lifetime?
Is love made up of grand proposals like this?
Or is love only evident when you see a couple newly sprinkled with love’s perfume – blind to the rest of the world, as they gaze deep into each others’ eyes and whisper things that make them take turns pushing one another lightly on the shoulder?
Or can love only be proven if you name a star after her (which you can apparently do) or arranged to have her name written in the sky by fireworks?
Awwwww.....
Well, if you think that all these acts of grandeur are everlasting love, then you’re seriously deluded. To me, love isn’t about airplanes pulling banners over stadiums, proposals on jumbo screens and giant words in sky writing. Neither is it about those ridiculous three little words. Love is much simpler than that.
No girl in the right mind would say no
Let me relate to you an incident that I’m lucky enough to witness in my lifetime…
My dad had a stroke back in 1993 which left the left side of his body paralysed. He was sent to the old Changi Hospital immediately after his fall and was still conscious when we visited him later in the day (after which he lapsed into a coma and passed away 2 weeks later). He was hungry and my mum cut up some apples for him to eat. As he ate the apples, he didn’t realise that he’s not been chewing on the left side of his mouth cos’ he couldn’t feel a thing there. So as he swallowed the food, he didn’t realise that some bits are still not chewed on properly. I was standing beside him then and my mum was standing behind me. A few minutes later, he choked on the un-chewed bits and went on to puke his guts out in my direction. Being the vain 15-year old that I was then, my first instinct was to jump backwards to avoid the vomit. And as I jumped backwards, to my surprise, my mum lunged forward and grabbed some cloth nearby to catch the vomit so it won’t spill all over my dad’s clothes. In the process, my dad ended up vomiting on her as well. I was just standing there stunned, not knowing what to do and at the same time feeling ashamed that I had avoided him at the slightest hint of inconvenience when I should have done more. And at that point in time, it dawned in me that I had witnessed an act of love, love of a lifetime. It may seem weird to classify this gross scenario as one but this act made me questioned myself, “Would I be so self-sacrificing?” “Would I do that if it was my husband next time?” “Who does that? Step in and get puke all over herself just so that the husband does not get dirty?” I would have to say that at that moment then, my mum became my hero.
My mum & dad back in 1991. It was her first time on a plane.
My mum may not have demonstrated big actions of love for the whole world to see, but perhaps there’s a lesson there for young people like us – Love isn’t about the big things, the grand gestures calculated to make a woman swoon. It’s simple acts of sacrifice like this, the little, seemingly mundane chores that, done with affection, speak of all the love in the world.
What love of a lifetime should look like...
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